The forthright yet unassuming and engagingly honest memoirs of a publisher whose controversial books on domestic and foreign politics made his house a force to be reckoned with.

The forthright yet unassuming and engagingly honest memoirs of a publisher whose controversial books on domestic and foreign politics made his house a force to be reckoned with.

The story behind the 1940s Commission on Freedom of the Press—groundbreaking then, timelier than ever now "A well-constructed, timely study, clearly relevant to current debates."—Kirkus, starred review In 1943, Time Inc. editor-in-chief Henry R. Luce sponsored the greatest collaboration of intellectuals in the twentieth century. He and University of Chicago president Robert Maynard Hutchins summoned the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, the Pulitzer-winning poet Archibald MacLeish, and ten other preeminent thinkers to join the Commission on Freedom of the Press. They spent three years wrestling with subjects that are as pertinent as ever: partisan media and distorted news, activists who silence rather than rebut their opponents, conspiracy theories spread by shadowy groups, and the survivability of American democracy in a post-truth age. The report that emerged, A Free and Responsible Press, is a classic, but many of the commission’s sharpest insights never made it into print. Journalist and First Amendment scholar Stephen Bates reveals how these towering intellects debated some of the most vital questions of their time—and reached conclusions urgently relevant today.

Writers and intellectuals in modern Japan have long forged dialogues across the boundaries separating the spheres of literature and thought. This book explores some of their most intellectually and aesthetically provocative connections in the volatile transwar years of the 1920s to 1950s. Reading philosophical texts alongside literary writings, the study links the intellectual side of literature to the literary dimensions of thought in contexts ranging from middlebrow writing to avant-garde modernism, and from the wartime left to the postwar right. Chapters trace these dynamics through the novelist Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s collaboration with the nativist linguist Yamada Yoshio on a modern translation of The Tale of Genji; the modernist writer Yokomitsu Riichi’s dialogue with Kyoto School philosophers around the question of “worldliness”; the Marxist poet Nakano Shigeharu’s and the philosopher Tosaka Jun’s thinking about prosaic everyday language; and the postwar rumination on liberal society that surrounded the scholar Edwin McClellan while he translated Natsume Sōseki’s classic 1914 novel Kokoro as a graduate student in the United States working with the famed economist Friedrich Hayek. Revealing unexpected intersections of literature, ideas, and politics in a global transwar context, the book concludes by turning to Murakami Haruki and the resonances of those intersections in a time closer to our own.

After 9/11, rightists capitalized on an atmosphere of fear and confusion to resuscitate the “culture wars” of the 1990s and once again targeted the academy. Using tactics reminiscent of the McCarthy era, religious firebrands, militant neoconservatives, and free market fundamentalists engaged in a concerted effort to silence voices critical of the ‘war on terror’ and liken legitimate dissent to treason. Brandishing a discourse of “patriotic correctness” (PC) that was informed by American ‘exceptionalism,’ Christian nationalism, anti-intellectualism, and virulent anti-liberalism, this coalition portrayed the professoriate as a dangerous cabal seeking the demise of ‘Western civilization.’ In Cold Breezes and Idiot Winds, Scatamburlo-D’Annibale explains why the most recent assault on academe must be understood in relation to the right’s broader offensive against liberalism. For decades, conservatives have worked diligently to construct a network of foundations, think tanks, and campus organizations dedicated to demonizing progressive thought, the legacy of the New Deal era, and the democratic social reforms of the 1960s. The author provides a detailed examination of this ideological infrastructure and how it advanced the agenda of PC post-9/11. She explores how the campaign for PC was aided and abetted by a right-wing media apparatus, how it continues to threaten academic freedom on campuses, and how it is currently infecting the larger body politic and contributing to the increased toxicity of the nation’s public dialogue. While purveyors of PC often invoke “culture war” rhetoric, Scatamburlo-D’Annibale adroitly reveals that their ultimate aim is to protect corporate power from any form of democratic accountability.

Alfred S. Regnery, the publisher of The American Spectator, has been a part of the American conservative movement since childhood, when his father founded The Henry Regnery Company, which subsequently became Regnery Publishing -- the preeminent conservative publishing house that, among other notable achievements, published William F. Buckley's first book, God and Man at Yale. Including many uniquely personal anecdotes and stories, Regnery himself now boldly chronicles the development of the conservative movement from 1945 to the present. The outpouring of grief at the funeral of Ronald Reagan in 2004 -- and the acknowledgment that Reagan has come to be considered one of the greatest presidents of the twentieth century -- is Regnery's opening for a fascinating insider story. Beginning at the start of the twentieth century, he shows how in the years prior to and just post World War II, expanding government power at home and the expanding Communist empire abroad inspired conservatives to band together to fight these threats. The founding of the National Review, the drive to nominate Barry Goldwater first as vice-president and later as president, the apparent defeat of the conservative movement at the hands of Lyndon Johnson, and the triumphant rise of Ronald Reagan from the ashes are all chronicled in vivid prose that shows a uniquely intimate knowledge of the key figures. Regnery shares his views on the opposition that formed in response to Earl Warren's Supreme Court rulings, the role of faith (both Roman Catholic and Evangelical) in the renewed vigor of conservatism, and the contributing role of American businessmen who attempted to oppose big government. Upstream ultimately gives perspective to how the most vibrant political and cultural force of our time has influenced American culture, politics, economics, foreign policy, and all institutions and sectors of American life.

Richard M. Weaver was one of the founders of modern conservatism. He is an enduring intellectual figure of twentieth-century America. Weaver was dedicated to examining the dual nature of human beings and the quest for civilized communities in a corrupted age that believed in the religion of science and in the "natural goodness" of man. The Vision of Richard Weaver is the first collection of essays about this seminal thinker. Thirty years after his untimely death, Richard Weaver remains a heroic figure to many conservatives and traditionalists concerned about the state of American culture. Now a new generation of readers can understand the importance of this pioneer of thought. The Vision of Richard Weaver will be of significant value to political theorists, philosophers, and students of American civilization.

Russell Kirk (1918--1994) is renowned worldwide as one of the founders of postwar American conservatism. His 1953 masterpiece, The Conservative Mind, became the intellectual touchstone for a reinvigorated movement and began a sea change in the nation's attitudes toward traditionalism. A prolific author and wise cultural critic, Kirk kept up a steady stream of correspondence with friends and colleagues around the globe, yet none of his substantial body of personal letters has ever been published -- letters as colorful and intelligent as the man himself. In Imaginative Conservatism, James E. Person Jr. presents one hundred and ninety of Kirk's most provocative and insightful missives. Covering a period from 1940 to 1994, these letters trace Kirk's development from a shy, precocious young man to a public intellectual firm in his beliefs and generous with his time and resources when called upon to provide for refugees, the homeless, and other outcasts. This carefully annotated and edited collection includes correspondence between Kirk and figures such as T.S. Eliot, William F. Buckley Jr., Ray Bradbury, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Charlton Heston, Nikolai Tolstoy, Wendell Berry, Richard Nixon, and Herbert Hoover, among many others. Kirk's conservatism was not primarily political but moral and imaginative, focusing always on the relationship of the human soul in community with others and with the transcendent. Beyond the wealth of autobiographical information that this collection affords, it offers thought-provoking wisdom from one of the twentieth century's most influential interpreters of American politics and culture.

This book presents the first full-scale survey written since the 1950s of American conservatism from the Founding to the Contract With America.

American Despots

Amazing low sale price in defense of authentic freedom as versus the presidency that betrayed it!

Everyone seems to agree that brutal dictators and despotic rulers deserve scorn and worse. But why have historians been so willing to overlook the despotic actions of the United States' own presidents? You can scour libraries from one end to the other and encounter precious few criticisms of America's worst despots.

The founders imagined that the president would be a collegial leader with precious little power who constantly faced the threat of impeachment. Today, however, the president orders thousands of young men and women to danger and death in foreign lands, rubber stamps regulations that throw enterprises into upheaval, controls the composition of the powerful Federal Reserve, and manages the priorities millions of swarms of bureaucrats that vex the citizenry in every way.

It is not too much of a stretch to say that the president embodies the Leviathan state as we know it. Or, more precisely, it is not an individual president so much as the very institution of the presidency that has been the major impediment of liberty. The presidency as the founders imagined it has been displaced by democratically ratified serial despotism. And, for that reason, it must be stopped.

Every American president seems to strive to make the historians' A-list by doing big and dramatic things—wars, occupations, massive programs, tyrannies large and small—in hopes of being considered among the "greats" such as Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR. They always imagine themselves as honored by future generations: the worse their crimes, the more the accolades.

Well, the free ride ends with Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom, edited by John Denson.

This remarkable volume (825 pages including index and bibliography) is the first full-scale revision of the official history of the U.S. executive state. It traces the progression of power exercised by American presidents from the early American Republic up to the eventual reality of the power-hungry Caesars which later appear as president in American history. Contributors examine the usual judgments of the historical profession to show the ugly side of supposed presidential greatness.

The mission inherent in this undertaking is to determine how the presidency degenerated into the office of American Caesar. Did the character of the man who held the office corrupt it, or did the power of the office, as it evolved, corrupt the man? Or was it a combination of the two? Was there too much latent power in the original creation of the office as the Anti-Federalists claimed? Or was the power externally created and added to the position by corrupt or misguided men?

There's never been a better guide to everything awful about American presidents. No, you won't get the civics text approach of see no evil. Essay after essay details depredations that will shock you, and wonder how American liberty could have ever survived in light of the rule of these people.

Contributors include George Bittlingmayer, John V. Denson, Marshall L. DeRosa, Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Lowell Gallaway, Richard M. Gamble, David Gordon, Paul Gottfried, Randall G. Holcombe, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Michael Levin, Yuri N. Maltsev, William Marina, Ralph Raico, Joseph Salerno, Barry Simpson, Joseph Stromberg, H. Arthur Scott Trask, Richard Vedder, and Clyde Wilson.